Seth Greene
HOW TO FIND MONEY FOR COLLEGE
MARIA GEFFERS
Tell us about your journey and the moment you knew who you wanted to become.
SETH GREENE
At 18, my life goal was to be a Broadway star. I went to Syracuse University for Musical Theater and every semester my dad would call me freaking out telling me he couldn't afford Syracuse anymore. I had to move home, live at home, get a job, do chores, and wash the dishes. He called every time he got the tuition bill. By the time I graduated, I had decided to become a college financial planner because I wanted to help other families save them from the stress, trauma, and drama that I went through. I wanted to help other families avoid the pain I went through.
TOM GEFFERS
You have a customized plan you use for parents. Can you take us through your process?
SETH GREENE
We start with where the client is now. We must know the magic number, which is called the expected family contribution or EFC. We need to find out what the federal government thinks you can afford to pay for college, which is never what you can actually afford to pay. It's always a lot more than what people can afford. After we figure out where we are starting from, then we must look at school selection. What schools is the student applying to, and based on the EFC how much money will they give the student in terms of free financial aid? I want to get my clients scholarships and grants they don’t have to pay back. I want free money.
We must determine ahead of time what those financial aid packages look like and if you can even afford to go to certain schools. We want to figure out if they can afford to go based on their current financial situation, so we need to know what the financial packages the student will get are going to look like. Then, the next part of the process is to appeal if schools don’t give you as much money as you want. We are one of the few firms in the country that will negotiate with every school for money on behalf of our students.
TOM GEFFERS
How can a student attend an elite school without being afraid of applying and getting the money they need, as opposed to applying to a state school?
SETH GREENE
That is a huge misconception. Most people see the sticker price of those schools and say, "There's no way we can afford it." They don’t realize that many private schools can be cheaper to go to than state schools because they have multi-billion-dollar endowment funds to give away. For example, even though Syracuse University is $70,000 a year now, it’s almost cheaper for my son to go there than SUNY Buffalo, which is where my dad threatened I had to go. It's because SUNY Buffalo has no need-based financial aid to offer, and Syracuse has billions. If you play your cards right and claim your fair share, the private schools end up costing the same or even less than a public school.
TOM GEFFERS
How do you pick colleges that give the best financial aid package? Do you do that with the families?
SETH GREENE
We do that with the families. We figure out their EFC. The magic number for college is knowing what percentage of need they will meet. If the sticker price is $70,000 and your EFC is $20,000, you have a gap of $50,000. If SUNY Buffalo will meet zero percent of that need, you’re on the hook for the entire $70,000. You’re on the hook for your EFC and the difference. If Syracuse will meet 100% of your need, then you’re only on the hook for the $20,000 of your EFC. You don’t have to pay the other $50,000 and regular tuition. If room at board at SUNY Buffalo is more than $20,000, Syracuse becomes cheaper.
TOM GEFFERS
How do you help families with college-related tax deductions and tax credits?
SETH GREENE
People should speak with college financial aid experts because depending on your financial situation, there may be tax-advantaged ways to pay for college. We had clients who could pay for college on a tax-favored basis depending on how they paid for it. Depending on where the money comes from, we might be able to save them a significant chunk of tax money as well.
TOM GEFFERS
30% of prospective college students don’t fill out a FAFSA. Can you talk about how important it is to fill out a FAFSA on or before October 1st?
SETH GREENE
Ideally a FAFSA would be filled out before a student’s senior year to take advantage of strategies that exist to reduce the amount of money you’ll pay. There are two types of financial aid. There is financial aid based on your economic situation and then there is merit-based aid, which is based on grades, SAT scores, extracurricular activities, and the ethnic and gender boxes you can check. You need to know what quotas the school is trying to fill. You need to know if you’re going out of state or staying in state. If you don’t fill out the financial aid forms, you can’t get either kind of financial aid. Not only do you have to fill out the FAFSA, but if you’re applying to private school, you must also fill out the CSS Profile too. Both have to be filled out to get any help.
For example, we had a client who didn’t fill out any financial forms because their kid had $300,000 for college and a 529 that grandpa set up. They were going to pay for it without financial aid. When their financial advisor found out, he yelled at them and sent them to us. When they came to us, they said they didn’t think they would get any money because they had already paid in full for one year at Boston University, which cost them $80,000. Because they hired us, however, their daughter got $44,5000 a year in scholarships. We cut their cost in half. The rest of the 529 is now going to her little brother. They won’t have to worry about where they get money for that. They missed out on the other aid they could have gotten because they didn’t fill the forms out and didn’t know about it.
TOM GEFFERS
Even high-income families want loans to cover college because they want their assets to gain more income at 8%. They can’t get those loans unless they fill out a FAFSA, correct?
SETH GREENE
There are more provisions in the college financial aid rules that allow you to get more free money for folks who are business owners or self-employed. We help W-2 employee families all day long, but there are more loopholes if you are a business owner or self-employed. We've even had clients who made $10 million a year who got financial aid.
TOM GEFFERS
Did COVID affect the amount of money students get?
SETH GREENE
It's affected everything significantly. Enrollment is down because more kids are taking a gap year and waiting. There are more kids changing where they’re going. There are people who go to school virtually who don’t know why they pay $70,000 a year to be on their computer. People are realizing they can do it from home, and they don’t have to live in a dorm room or go to class to learn. There is a lot of pressure on the schools, which you can manipulate and work to your advantage to pay less for school.
MARIA GEFFERS
I heard the CSS was a nightmare to figure out. Do you help clients with that?
SETH GREENE
We fill out both forms for them. Our clients don’t have to touch it. The FAFSA has been reduced to 36 questions. The CSS has more than 500 questions.
MARIA GEFFERS
What kinds of students or parents are your ideal client?
SETH GREENE
I like to work with families who want to send their kid to a private school but don’t think they can afford it. We have worked with people who have run the gamut. We’ve had kids who got perfect SAT scores and we’ve worked with kids whose SAT scores are under 1000. The better the grades, the better the test scores, the easier job it is for us to get them money. We’ll analyze their situation, calculate their EFC, and run an analysis on their number-one dream school. If can help them, we’ll tell them and then they can decide if they want to work with us. If we can’t move the needle, we’ll tell them up front because we don’t want them to hire us and be disappointed.
MARIA GEFFERS
If two different colleges are offering the same student different amounts of money, how do you figure out if this is a good case to negotiate?
SETH GREENE
We can calculate the aid packages they should get in advance. Then, if the school doesn't award that, it starts with evaluating the award letters. Did they under-award you? It’s very common. Then it starts with writing a letter to the school that we write for the parents to start the appeals process. We let the school know there is an appeal coming and why. If they don’t cough up more money, I will physically get on the phone, find the right person in the Admissions or Financial Aid office, talk to them, and plead the case in a non-emotional way. We have a good track record of getting those under-awarded offers fixed.
MARIA GEFFERS
How do I receive financial aid from my chosen college?
SETH GREENE
There are three ways you'll find out. The school will send you an email, then a letter, and then the school will upload the offer into your financial aid portal.
MARIA GEFFERS
How do students know the money they get is a scholarship and not a loan?
SETH GREENE
It will tell you the difference and break it down. There should be a line-by-line breakdown. Scholarships and grants will have the word Scholarships and Grants on them. A loan might say Parent PLUS. It might say Subsidized. It might say Unsubsidized. Those are all loans you have to pay back. If it’s a scholarship or grant, it will clearly say so.
MARIA GEFFERS
Can you explain to parents the difference between being subsidized and unsubsidized?
SETH GREENE
A subsidized loan means the federal government subsidizes the loan. That means they pay your interest until the child graduates. An unsubsidized loan is not backed by the federal government. You start paying interest from the day you get the check.
MARIA GEFFERS
Is taking out a Parent PLUS loan a smart thing to do?
SETH GREENE
There are limits on the Subsidized and Unsubsidized loans depending on what year your child is in college. Those loans are usually between $5,000 and $7,000. That’s not enough money to go to school, even if you combine them both. The Parent PLUS loan is designed to cover some of the rest. Then we have a matrix of the private lenders in the country who will provide college loans at attractive rates and terms if there is still a gap between any scholarships or grants, the Unsubsidized, Subsidized, and Parent PLUS loan. If they still need $10,000 or $20,000 a year that would have to come from a private lender.
MARIA GEFFERS
What happens if a student doesn’t graduate in four years and runs out of money?
SETH GREENE
We dealt with this situation recently. A mom and daughter came into our office and the daughter was on her third school. She spent her freshman, sophomore, and junior year at different colleges. They were all local, and she was living at home, thankfully. The problem is, she’s changed her major three times. Many of her credits don’t transfer. I had to tell the daughter the amount of money her parents budgeted for four years. They couldn’t do anymore. In essence she was starting her freshman year for the third time. She had to borrow money for the classes she had to pay to take a second time.
TOM GEFFERS
It’s important to pick the right school. Transferring multiple times can be expensive.
MARIA GEFFERS
Do you help students look at finding the right career to pay back their student loans?
SETH GREENE
We have an onboarding process where we will have the student take some assessments. We will interview the student and ask them a lot of questions designed to try to determine what they want to study. We'll do those interviews without the parents because the kids will tell us things they don’t want their parents to know. One of our clients was an 18-year-old headed to college on a Division One football scholarship to play quarterback with legitimate prospects. He was our most dramatic case because in the interview he told us he didn’t want to play football, he wanted to go to a different school for musical theater. I told him we were going to have to have a significant conversation with his parents. I said, “Your dad’s thinking you’re his retirement plan when you make the NFL someday.”
MARIA GEFFERS
Finding out your child isn’t a good fit can be heartbreaking for parents. It’s important that both the parents and the student are on the same page. We had a client who told us her son wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. Then when he took the tests, he scored low in science. When we broke the news, the son wasn’t fazed because he wanted to be a lawyer. She thought her son wanted to be an aeronautical engineer because he liked Star Trek and Star Wars.
TOM GEFFERS
How he's in Hofstra pre-law.
MARIA GEFFERS
Should students look into private scholarships, and will that affect the overall financial package college will give them?
SETH GREENE
Only 2% of the $275 billion of financial aid that's available every year is private scholarships. You will get more money by playing the game correctly from the schools themselves and from the federal and state government. We have many databases that are credible, that we vetted, that we recommend. I wouldn't spend your time looking for breadcrumbs, however, because you might spend three weeks on paperwork for a $500 scholarship. Your child could have made more money bagging groceries at the store.
MARIA GEFFERS
Do you see any big changes in financial aid at all?
SETH GREENE
There are a lot of changes being made. The Consolidated Appropriations Act was enacted last December. President Biden has changed the laws several times since then. He has bills in Congress asking for tens of billions of dollars for minority colleges, minority students, and for kids who aren't finishing in four years. There are a lot of changes in progress right now, which is why it's important to work with someone who's on top of it every day, who knows what those changes are, and how to capitalize them and get more free money for your kids.
MARIA GEFFERS
What was your biggest challenge when you started putting this financial aid package together?
SETH GREENE
My biggest challenge getting started was decoding the process. I have the federal financial aid formula printed out. It's more than 30 pages of equations designed to determine your expected family contribution. There is one book written on the topic, and it’s over 1,000 pages long. Since then, we've had the normal challenges of growing a business in terms of hiring people, getting the word out, marketing it so we have wait lists. We're blessed to have many school counselors who refer their students and families to us on a regular basis. We have an army of financial advisors who send us their clients. It's been a long road, but it's been well worth it.
MARIA GEFFERS
What is your most memorable rewarding situation?
SETH GREENE
We have a student at Virginia Tech now. His mother is a single mom, a waitress who makes little money. He's very smart and was going for a double major. He has great grades. We were able to get him almost a full ride. We got him 90% off the sticker price at some of the schools that he applied to, including one of the top ones on his list. It's one thing to cut it from $80,000 to $40,000 but it’s another to send a disadvantaged socioeconomic background to college without the family worrying about funding it or going into debt. It’s rewarding to help someone who doesn’t think they can afford our help save up to $200,000 on college.
TOM GEFFERS
You’re making a difference for students and their families. Thank you for sharing these insights. And a note to the readers…Seth changed roles from interviewee to interviewer for the next chapter.
